What matters more for a reconnaissance drone: range, endurance, or payload?

We got into a debate at work because everyone kept focusing on completely different specs.

One person was looking almost exclusively at range. Someone else said endurance is what actually matters because there's no point getting somewhere fast if you have to head back almost immediately. Then another guy argued that none of it matters if the payload is too limited to carry decent optics.

The more I looked into different reconnaissance drone specs, the more it felt like every platform is built around a different compromise rather than one being objectively better.

For those who've actually worked with a reconnaissance drone, what ended up being the first limitation you noticed in real use? Was it range, flight time, payload, or something else entirely?